On paper, June looked like a bad month for President Barack Obama. It began with a gaffe, his
lighthearted comment that “the private sector is doing fine.” Then the Federal Reserve revised its
growth forecast downward, making it clear that 8 percent unemployment is likely to linger past
Election Day. Consumer confidence has sagged to a five-month low, and in one poll released this
week, 61 percent of Americans said they think the country’s on the wrong track.

On top of that, Mitt Romney is out-raising the president in campaign donations, an unusual
problem for an incumbent to face.

So how, amid all that bad news, has Obama clung to a lead of about 3 percentage points in an
average of major polls? And how has he built a more impressive margin in the 12 swing states that
actually will decide the election — 50 percent to 42 percent in an NBC News-Wall Street Journal
Poll released this week?

Part of the reason is that Obama has the incumbency advantage, and he’s been using it in a blur
of executive action to remind the Democratic electorate that he’s their guy. He has made it easier
for students to repay their loans. He endorsed gay marriage after years of waffling, a decision one
Romney adviser privately conceded was “a net plus for the president.” He announced that the
government would stop deporting most undocumented immigrants who entered the United States as
children.

Romney, who doesn’t have the ability to change government policy with a signature, has had a
hard time competing.

Equally important, though, Obama and his campaign have waged an effective and ferocious battle
to define Romney as a heartless capitalist whose former company, Bain Capital, has sent jobs
overseas.

Characteristically, Vice President Joe Biden delivered the attack in its purest form: “You’ve
got to give Mitt Romney credit,” he said in Iowa on Tuesday. “He is a job creator — in Singapore
and China (and) India.”

Romney’s representatives hotly deny the claim that Bain-owned firms ever shipped any U.S. jobs
overseas, and they insist the company created jobs here, too. But that’s not an argument that’s
easy to win, and it’s not a debate the GOP wants its candidate to get tangled up in.

The Obama campaign’s strategy is straightforward. It wants to impeach Romney on what he cites as
his main qualification for the presidency: that he’s a successful businessman who knows how to
create jobs in the private sector.

Voters know Obama, but many of them don’t know Romney yet; in one recent poll, only 57 percent
of respondents knew he was a Mormon. The Obama campaign realizes it has a brief window when it can
shape how people see the GOP candidate.

And the strategy may be working, at least in the short run. The NBC-Journal poll found that in
the 12 swing states, where the Obama campaign has been running TV ads, the percentage of voters
saying they have an unfavorable view of the Republican grew from 36 percent a month ago to 41
percent now.

Romney advisers point out that when Newt Gingrich attacked Romney’s record as a capitalist in
the primary campaign, it backfired. But Democrats say that was because the message sounded
anti-capitalist to GOP voters; the public at large, they hope, will be more receptive.

We’ll see. Obama’s chances this fall are still, in large part, hostage to events, from the
voters’ reaction to this week’s Supreme Court ruling on healthcare to whether the latest economic
crash in Europe spreads to our shores, as well. And once the GOP and its “super-PAC” allies start
spending in earnest, they’ll be hitting the president hard with negative messages of their own.

At this point, Romney campaign officials don’t sound worried. “Obama is doing better because he’s
outspending Romney” on television advertising, one Romneyite told me. “The attacks on Romney’s
wealth and Bain are not sticking.“

But they probably are relieved, nevertheless, that Romney has decided not to fly to London to
watch his wife’s very expensive horse compete in the Olympics; it wouldn’t have played well in
Ohio.

Is that unfair? Probably. But politics ain’t beanbag — and it’s certainly not dressage.